site has links and film trailers of an American architect who uses throw-away consumables to build "earthships";
http://www.earthship.net (huge US website, incl. hard to get internships)
has UK followers (16 home project) here:
— Someone with experience recently told me that it takes about 50 years for an idea to be accepted by a community and become a reality. For example, the Hoosier Heartland idea was birthed in 1960. So I am beginning now. My idea involves transportation of the public kind — local mass transit.
Many years ago, in the early 1900s, I believe, there was local public transit here and elsewhere known as the “interurban.” It was an electrified light passenger rail car that traveled to and from surrounding points such as Kokomo, Peru, and Royal Center, etc. The interurban eventually lost out to the automobile. I would like to see it return and service the people all points along the ways of Winamac, Royal Center, Peru, Monticello, Delphi, Flora, Lafayette, Rochester and Kokomo.
Why? Because energy is not likely to be any cheaper in the future than it is today. The most recent credible reference to evidence my claim would be Nov. 19th’s front page of the Wall Street Journal and the most recent outlook report from the EIA. Some would argue that alternatives such as ethanol and biodiesel will take the place of oil in transportation. However, it’s not generally understood that any alternative will cost as much or more than oil. Even if we quit using foreign oil, we will still pay a price for any alternatives or domestic oil. At some point, it will take more energy to extract any oil, requiring two or more barrels of oil to produce one barrel of oil. This is based on “energy returned on energy invested.” When it costs more to get that oil out of the ground, refine it and transport it, the cost will be so high no matter where it comes from that the average person won’t be able to afford it and demand destruction will develop. Hence, the price will not be able to be logically lowered due to decreased demand because it will cost more to produce that one barrel of oil no matter what. There is also the potential of supply not being able to keep up with demand. Either way, the future price is going nowhere but up.
So, what advantages would an interurban passenger rail have for our area? I have three initial answers: College students, drunk drivers and low wage homeowners who don’t work in their hometowns.
Presently, this region is blessed with many schools of higher education including Ivy Tech, Indiana University and Purdue among others. Speaking from personal experience, many adult learners who attend these schools to improve their future have a difficult time providing their own reliable transportation. An interurban rail line would help them do this without worrying about a reliable vehicle and the cost of gas during their quest for a higher education. An interurban would also accommodate those younger students who live on campus to come and go to this area if they have no transportation of their own.
Also, many people who love the nightlife and like to come into town or drive out of town often need to have a designated driver. Sometimes it doesn’t happen. Those who decide to drive back while drinking pose a great risk to themselves and others as some do.
An interurban would allow enjoyment of food and commerce around the region that might otherwise be passed over and could reduce the risk to our well-being via drunk drivers on the road.
Most importantly, I think of low-income wage earners working outside of their counties. Not only is there a personal cost of transportation but also a cost of the viability of each county. If the cost of transportation doesn’t decrease (which I believe it won’t), these populations of people will end up moving closer to their employers and any home ownership they may now have in said county may bring a decrease in tax revenues from property taxes to local income taxes if they decide it’s not cost effective for them to remain here and travel every day. In simpler terms, our tax base could decrease. An interurban could allow this group to remain in the area, keeping revenues in place.
I’ve no knowledge of what must be done to make this idea a reality. I’ve nothing to help with the cost of the project, although I believe a regional/community investment such as this would pay for itself in time by keeping people here as well as alleviating hardship on the local subcultures mentioned above.
All I have are ideas. This would not only require the efforts of our local leaders, but they would have to work in conjunction with the other leaders in the surrounding communities also potentially serviced. It could be a joint regional effort. Too costly? What about interurban buses?
In 50 years, it might be more costly when people can’t afford to travel to their workplace or attend school for lack of cheap transportation. Hopefully, some of the leaders of the community are reading this and will understand my call for an “interurban revival.” Who will follow my cue?
Gwen Ashby is a resident of Logansport.
I'm planning on contacting this person to possibly help me create a dialogue with my community leaders regarding resource depletion, it's impact on our community, and how we're going to mitigate the impact fewer resources will have on us locally.
A growing number of oil-industry chieftains are endorsing an idea long deemed fringe: The world is approaching a practical limit to the number of barrels of crude oil that can be pumped every day.
Some predict that, despite the world's fast-growing thirst for oil, producers could hit that ceiling as soon as 2012. This rough limit -- which two senior industry officials recently pegged at about 100 million barrels a day -- is well short of global demand projections over the next few decades. Current production is about 85 million barrels a day.
The world certainly won't run out of oil any time soon. And plenty of energy experts expect sky-high prices to hasten the development of alternative fuels and improve energy efficiency. But evidence is mounting that crude-oil production may plateau before those innovations arrive on a large scale. That could set the stage for a period marked by energy shortages, high prices and bare-knuckled competition for fuel.
The current debate represents a significant twist on an older, often-derided notion known as the peak-oil theory. Traditional peak-oil theorists, many of whom are industry outsiders or retired geologists, have argued that global oil production will soon peak and enter an irreversible decline because nearly half the available oil in the world has been pumped. They've been proved wrong so often that their theory has become debased.
LONDON, England (CNN) -- The world has reached the point of maximum oil output and production levels will halve by 2030 -- a situation that will eventually lead to war and disaster, a report claims.
The German-based Energy Watch Group released a report Tuesday saying the world's oil production peaked in 2006 and from now on will drop by around 3 percent a year. It says that by as early as 2030, the global availability of oil will be half of what it was at its peak.
"It's a very serious result," said Hans-Josef Fell, a German lawmaker from the environmentalist Green Party who commissioned the report. "I fear the world will come into a big economic crisis in the coming years."
The report warns that coal, uranium, and other key fossil fuels are also in declining supply. It predicts the fall in fossil fuel production will bring with it the threat of war, humanitarian disaster, and general social unrest.
But Leo Drollas, who leads oil and gas market analysis and forecasting at the Center for Global Energy Studies in London, said there are plenty of supplies and no looming crisis. He said the report sounds like "scaremongering."
Drollas says production could still slow one day, but only because new reserves will be considered too difficult or expensive to extract.
"Oil could be left in the ground and we could move on to another fuel in the future, not because we're running out of oil but because, economically speaking, it is not worth extracting the oil," Drollas said.
advertisement
The debate comes as oil prices have hovered at record level. Wednesday morning, NYMEX crude was listed at $84.96 a barrel; oil prices topped $90 a barrel last week.
Analysts do agree, however, that oil prices could continue to rise, especially if there is further instability in the Middle East.
World oil production has already peaked and will fall by half as soon as 2030, according to a report which also warns that extreme shortages of fossil fuels will lead to wars and social breakdown.
The German-based Energy Watch Group will release its study in London today saying that global oil production peaked in 2006 - much earlier than most experts had expected. The report, which predicts that production will now fall by 7% a year, comes after oil prices set new records almost every day last week, on Friday hitting more than $90 (£44) a barrel.
In your Homecoming speech this month, you said that the “peak oil” era is coming to an end, which sounds ominous. Can you tell us what you mean?
The best way is a quote from Cambridge engineer researcher associate Dan Yergin. “It took us 125 years to use the first trillion barrels of oil, and we'll use the next trillion in 30.”
That defines in my mind the issue we're facing, but there is a huge debate going on between basically two schools of thought. One is the Cambridge Energy Research Association's thought, which is that we have plenty of oil in the world, and we are good at developing technology. In spite of the fact that energy information agencies are forecasting we will be using another 30 million plus barrels a day of oil in the world between now and 2030, and technology will find a way to do that. That's one school of thought.
Another school of thought says we are at the maximum point of producability, and so it's decline from here on down. That's the “peak oil” theory.
If you look at production in North America or any of these mature basins, or even production from the Williston Basin, you'll see a demonstration what “peak oil” looks like. When you deal with a finite resource, you can develop it, produce it and keep increasing it up to a point. Then, once you go past the mid-way point, you're into decline.
